This document summarizes a study examining age-related differences in emotion regulation and the role of mindfulness. It finds that older adults show a positivity bias when rating images and increased prefrontal cortex activation during cognitive reappraisal compared to young adults. Older adults report higher levels of dispositional mindfulness. Higher mindfulness is associated with greater prefrontal cortex recruitment and reduced amygdala reactivity during reappraisal for both age groups. The study aims to further examine relationships between mindfulness, cognitive reappraisal success, and neural correlates with an additional older adult participant. Future work developing interventions using mindfulness to enhance emotion regulation abilities in aging is discussed.

1.  
Monika Wanis
Clinical Neuroscience Lab
The Ohio State University
Ruchika Shaurya Prakash, Ph.D.

2.  Older adults show
significant decline
in cognitive
control abilities
(Prakash et al., 2012)
 High risk of
cognitive decline
 Poor quality of
life (Kramer &
Erickson, 2007)
 Older adults show
preservation of
emotion
processing
abilities (Charles &
Carstensen,2007;
Mather, 2012)
(Park et al., 2010)

3.  Aging associated with more positive overall emotional well-
being and greater emotional stability (Carstensen et al., 2011)
 Older adults report lower levels of negative emotion and higher
levels of positive emotion (Stawski et al., 2008)
Rheault & McGeeney, 2011 Carstensen et al., 2011

4.  As perceived time left in life shrinks with age, people are more
motivated to regulate emotions (Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles,
1999)
Carstensen, 1995

5.  What is emotion regulation?
o All conscious and unconscious strategies used to increase, maintain, or
decrease one or more components of an emotional response
 Antecedent-focused strategies
o Situation selection
o Situation modification
o Attention deployment
o Cognitive change
 Response-focused
strategies
o Response modulation Gross, 1998

6.  What is cognitive emotional reappraisal?
o Altering one’s interpretation of the meaning of a situation so as to
change its emotional impact (Gross, 1998)
 Effective and associated with more positive emotion, less
negative emotion and greater levels of well-being (Gross & John,
2003)

7.  Emotion reappraisal consistently
reduces subjective experience of
negative emotion
 Emotional reappraisal recruits
regions of the prefrontal cortex
 Research on the effects of emotion
reappraisal on the elderly is limited
Ochsner et al., 2002; 2004

8.  Self-report data has suggested that older adults have lower
levels of difficulty in emotion regulation overall compared to
young (Orgeta, 2009)
 Regulating negative emotions has been shown to be less costly
in older adults in their cognitive performance than younger
adults (Scheibe & Blanchard-Fields, 2009)
 Relative to younger adults, older adults are less successful
using reappraisal to decrease unpleasant emotion (Opitz et al.,
2010)

9.  What is Mindfulness?
o Mindfulness training vs. dispositional mindfulness
o Purposeful, non-judgemental, attentional awareness to present
moment experiences (Kabat-Zinn, 1990)
 Evidence for Dispositional Mindfulness
o Enhances quality of life and brain function connectivity (Urry et al., 2006)
o Reduces anxiety, depression, pain and emotion based disorders
(Grossman et al., 2004)
o Reduction in emotional reactivity and better regulation of emotions
(Creswell et al., 2007)
o Those with higher levels of trait mindfulness are better able to
regulate their emotions through emotion reappraisal (Modinos,
Ormel, & Aleman, 2009)

10.  Mindfulness associated with enhanced controlled, top-down
processing in emotional contexts, older adults show an
advantage Affect-Labeling Task
Creswell et al.,

11.  Higher mindfulness disposition
was associated with:
o Decreased amygdala activation
o Increased PFC recruitment
 Areas of lateral PFC show
greatest structural and
functional decline in aging (Raz
et al., 2004)
 Higher levels of dispositional
mindfulness may result in
enhanced cognitive control and
better cognitive emotion
reappraisal Prakash et al., 2012

12.  Cross-sectional analysis
o Older Adults N = 50, Younger Adults N = 50

13.  Mindful Attention and Awareness Scale (MAAS) (Brown & Ryan,
2003)
o 15-item questionnaire designed to capture attention and awareness in
daily life
o Items rated on a six-point likert scale: 1 = almost always; 6 =
almost never
 Example items:
o “I perceive my feelings and emotions without having to react to them”
o “When I do things, my mind wanders off and I’m easily distracted”
 Higher scores reflect higher levels of mindfulness disposition

14.  Focus on the picture while thinking of something to tell yourself
that will help you feel less negative towards it
 For every picture following the regulate cue you should ask
yourself, “What can I tell myself in order to feel less distressed
or negative?”
 Example: Viewing a picture of someone who is ill
o It will soon be resolved, help is on the way
o Maybe it’s not as painful as it looks
o Maybe they are giving him/her drugs so they aren’t in pain
o Maybe this is just for TV so it’s not real
 Actively try to convince yourself and really believe your
reappraisal so you decrease how negative you feel as much as
possible

15. Oschner et al., 2002

16.  Using a cross-sectional design with young and older adults:
o Age related differences in Cognitive Emotion Reappraisal
o Neural correlates of Cognitive Emotion Reappraisal in older and young
adults
o Age-related differences in Dispositional Mindfulness
o Association between Mindfulness Disposition and Cognitive Reappraisal
Success
o Neural association between Mindfulness Disposition and neural
correlates of Cognitive Emotion Reappraisal

17. Younger Adults
Demographic
n = 50
Mean (SD) or
Percent
Age 23.54 (3.30)
Gender 64% Female
Education 16.30 (2.29)
Older Adults
Demographic
n = 50
Mean (SD) or
Percent
Age 65.34 (4.80)
Gender 64% Female
Education 17.02 (2.35)

18.  Specific Aim: Determine whether older adults exhibit a positivity
bias for images compared to young adults
 Hypothesis 1: Older adults will rate images as more positive
than young adults
 Analyses: Repeated-Measures ANOVA

19.  Behavioral
Results
o Main effect of
condition
o Main effect of
age-group
• Neutral
Observe
o No significant
age X condition
interaction

20.  Specific Aim: Determine whether older adults show significant
differences in cortical activation patterns of cognitive control
regions during cognitive reappraisal compared to young adults
 Hypothesis 2:
o A. Older adults will exhibit enhanced prefrontal cortex (PFC) recruitment
during Affect Regulate > Affect Observe condition compared to young
adults
o B. Older adults will exhibit reduced amygdala reactivity in during the
Affect Regulate > Affect Observe condition compared to young adults
 Analyses: FSL 5.0.1: FEAT (fMRI Expert Analysis Tool),
thresholded at voxelwise z-score of 1.65, corrected for multiple
comparisons at p-value of 0.05

21. Old n = 19, Young n = 20, Young + Old n = 40
 Young  Old + Young Old

22.  Specific Aim: Determine if older adults have higher levels of
dispositional mindfulness compared to young adults
 Hypothesis 3: Older adults will report having higher levels of
dispositional mindfulness than young adults
 Analyses: Independent-Samples T Test

23.  Outlier: CADE 119
o Replaced score with a 2.5 Standard Deviation
 There is a significant difference between older and young
adults in MAAS as a measure of dispositional mindfulness
o OA more positive

24.  Specific Aim: Determine if older and young adults with higher
levels of dispositional mindfulness show greater success in
reappraisal of negative emotion
 Hypothesis 4: Older and young adults with higher levels of
dispositional mindfulness will have greater levels of cognitive
reappraisal success
 Analyses: Pearson’s and Spearman’s Bivariate Correlation

25.  Cognitive Reappraisal Success = Affect Regulate – Affect
Observe
o Insignificant relationship
between dispositional
mindfulness and cognitive
reappraisal success in
older adults
o Significant, negative
relationship between
dispositional mindfulness
and cognitive reappraisal
success

26.  Specific Aim: Determine whether older adults with higher levels of
dispositional mindfulness show significant differences in cortical
activation patterns of cognitive control regions during cognitive
reappraisal compared to young adults with higher levels of
dispositional mindfulness
 Hypothesis 5:
o A. Older adults with higher levels of dispositional mindfulness will exhibit
enhanced PFC recruitment during Affect Regulate > Affect Observe
condition compared to young adults with higher levels of dispositional
mindfulness
o B. Older adults with higher levels of dispositional mindfulness will exhibit
reduced amygdala reactivity during the Affect Regulate > Affect Observe
condition compared to young adults with higher levels of dispositional
mindfulness
 Analyses: FSL 5.0.1: FEAT, thresholded at voxelwise z-score of 1.65,
corrected for multiple comparisons at p-value of 0.05

27.  Old MAAS – No significant cluster survived thresholding
 Young MAAS
 Old MAAS + Young MAAS
Young n = 20, Young + Old n = 40

28.  Old MAAS
 Young MAAS
 Old MAAS + Young MAAS
Old n = 19, Young n = 20,
Young + Old n = 40

29.  Old MAAS
 Young MAAS
 Old MAAS + Young MAAS
Old n = 19, Young n = 20,
Young + Old n = 40

30.  Behavioral association between Mindfulness Disposition and
Cognitive Emotion Reappraisal
o Older adults seem to have a more positive bias when subjectively rating
neutral images
 Neural correlates of Cognitive Emotion Reappraisal in older and
young adults
o Older and younger adults have enhanced PFC recruitment which is
indicative of successful emotion regulation, the insular cortex activation
is indicative of bottom-up, emotional reactivity
 Age-related differences in Dispositional Mindfulness
o Older adults report significantly higher levels of dispositional mindfulness
than younger adults

31.  Association between Mindfulness Disposition and Cognitive
Reappraisal Success
o Significant negative correlation between dispositional mindfulness and
successful cognitive reappraisal of negative emotions in younger adults
o Would FFMQ be better to correlate with cognitive reappraisal success?
 Neural correlates between Mindfulness Disposition and
Cognitive Emotion Reappraisal
o Older and younger adults with higher levels of dispositional mindfulness
display significant functioning of cortical brain regions associated with
higher-level, top-down cognitive control and attention
o This is evidence for increased emotion regulation abilities via
mindfulness

32.  Collect 1 last older adult!
 Rerun correlation between mindfulness disposition and cognitive
reappraisal success using FFMQ?
 Reanalyze data to determine neural correlates of mindfulness
disposition and cognitive reappraisal success
 Mindfulness represents a promising holistic approach to enhancing
basic emotion-cognition processes
 Future work is needed to develop a more refined understanding of
cognitive, affective, and neural processes in aging and their potential
malleability to neuroplasticity-based approaches like mindfulness
 Ultimately, establish a new, integrative approach to inspire future
research and clinical practice in the aging field

33. Thank you for all of your help, comments and suggestions!
It is much appreciated!
 Dr. Ruchika Shaurya Prakash
 The Clinical Neuroscience Laboratory
o Brittney Schirda
o Alisha Janssen
o Stephanie Fountain
o Mariam Hussain
o Liat Zabludovsky
o Undergraduate RAs